Advanced MCS Certified Installers Scraper

Concurrent, high-performance scraper for mcscertified.com/find-an-installer/ the official UK registry of MCS-certified installers. Uses a parallel two-phase architecture to scrape all 5,500+ installers up to 3x faster than sequential scrapers.

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Use Cases

• Solar PV Lead Generation Build targeted lists of Solar PV certified installers by region at speed
• Heat Pump Market Analysis Map Air Source & Ground Source Heat Pump installer distribution across the UK
• Competitive Intelligence Identify certified installers in target postcodes and service areas
• Trade Body Auditing Verify certification status, bodies, and technology coverage in bulk
• Green Energy Directories Generate clean structured data for renewable energy directories and comparison tools
• Supply Chain Development Find installation partners by technology type (battery storage, biomass, solar thermal, wind turbine, etc.)

Features

• Concurrent Fetching Multi-page parallel worker pool (configurable 1-20) scrapes pages simultaneously instead of one-at-a-time
• Two-Phase Architecture Phase 1 discovers total pages from a single request, Phase 2 dispatches workers to harvest all remaining pages in parallel
• Per-Page Error Resilience Individual page failures are caught and logged; remaining workers continue unaffected. Summary report at end
• Technology Filtering Filter by 10+ renewable technology types (server-side via API)
• Regional Filtering Filter by UK nation (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) with England subregion support
• All Contact Data Email, telephone, website, full address breakdown (line 1/2/3, county, postcode, country)
• Certification Info Certification number, certification body, boiler upgrade scheme eligibility
• Geographic Coordinates Latitude and longitude for each installer
• Comprehensive Coverage Scrapes all 5,500+ certified installers in the MCS database
• Configurable Pagination Set a page limit for small test runs or scrape the complete dataset
• Clean Output Structured JSON in Apify dataset with consistent field naming

Input Options

Field	Type	Description
technologies	Multi-select	Filter by renewable technology types
regions	Multi-select	Filter by UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
englandSubregions	Multi-select	Sub-regions within England (only applies when England is selected)
maxPages	Integer	Maximum pages to scrape (0 = all pages, ~185 pages for full dataset)
concurrencyLimit	Integer	Pages to fetch in parallel (1-20, default: 5). Higher = faster but more API load

Available Technology Filters

Value	Label
air-source-heat-pump	Air Source Heat Pump
battery-storage	Battery Storage
biomass	Biomass
exhaust-air-heat-pump	Exhaust Air Heat Pump
ground-water-source-heat-pump	Ground/Water Source Heat Pump
micro-chp	Micro CHP
small-wind-turbine	Small Wind Turbine
solar-assisted-heat-pump	Solar Assisted Heat Pump
solar-heating	Solar Heating
solar-pv	Solar PV

Available Region Filters

Value	Label	Subregions
england	England	Eastern, East Midlands, London, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands, Yorkshire & Humberside
scotland	Scotland
wales	Wales
northern-ireland	Northern Ireland

Performance

Concurrency	Full Scrape (5,500+ installers)
1 (sequential)	~3-4 minutes
5 (default)	~1-2 minutes
10	~45-60 seconds
20	~30-45 seconds

• Per page: ~1 second
• Container size: ~60MB (Node.js 20, no browser dependencies)
• Memory usage: ~80MB

Performance Tuning

• Low concurrency (1-3): Gentle on the target API; use if you encounter rate limiting or are running many concurrent actors
• Medium concurrency (4-10): Best balance of speed and reliability for most use cases
• High concurrency (11-20): Maximum throughput; may trigger API rate limiting. Use for one-off full scrapes where speed is critical

The actor isolates per-page errors using Promise.allSettled, so individual page failures at high concurrency don't crash the entire run. Failed pages are logged in the final summary.

Output Fields

Each installer record in the dataset includes:

Field	Description
name	Installer company name
installerId	Unique MCS installer ID
email	Contact email address
telephone	Contact phone number
website	Company website URL
address	Full address (combined)
addressLine1	Address line 1
addressLine2	Address line 2
addressLine3	Address line 3
county	County
postcode	Postcode
country	Country
certificationNumber	MCS certification number
certificationBody	Certifying body
boilerUpgradeScheme	Boiler Upgrade Scheme eligibility (boolean)
technologies	Array of renewable technology labels
regions	Array of UK region labels
lat	Latitude coordinate
lng	Longitude coordinate
distance	Distance from search centre point
technologySubType	Technology sub-type
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of when the record was scraped

Error Handling

The actor uses Promise.allSettled for the parallel phase, meaning:

• A failed page fetch does not abort the entire run
• Failed pages are tracked in a per-run error log
• All successfully fetched pages are saved regardless
• A summary of failed pages (if any) is printed at the end

This makes the actor robust against transient network issues or API hiccups at high concurrency.

Quick Start

1. Open the actor in Apify Console: advanced-mcs-certified-installers-scraper
2. Click Start with default settings to scrape all installers
3. Adjust concurrencyLimit to tune speed vs. load
4. Export results as JSON, CSV, XML, or Excel

API Example

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('morkerr/advanced-mcs-certified-installers-scraper').call({
    technologies: ['solar-pv'],
    regions: ['scotland'],
    maxPages: 10,
    concurrencyLimit: 5,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Extracted ${items.length} installers`);

Limitations

• Region filtering is applied client-side because the MCS API does not support server-side region filtering
• The MCS AJAX nonce has a 12-24 hour lifetime; the actor extracts a fresh nonce on each run
• The API returns a maximum of 30 results per page
• High concurrency settings (15-20) may trigger API rate limiting; reduce concurrencyLimit if you encounter throttling

Changelog

2.0.0

• Added concurrent fetching parallel worker pool (configurable 1-20 concurrency)
• Two-phase architecture: discover total pages first, then harvest concurrently
• Per-page error resilience via Promise.allSettled individual page failures don't abort the run
• Summary error reporting for failed pages
• Removed sequential-only resume in favour of parallel throughput

1.0.0

• Initial release
• AJAX API-based scraping (no browser)
• Technology and region filtering
• Complete installer data extraction

Support

Report issues or request features via GitHub Issues.

Disclaimer

This actor scrapes publicly available data from mcscertified.com. Users are responsible for complying with the website's terms of service and applicable data protection regulations when using scraped data.